Speed (engine)
Speed was an engine was utilized throughout Black Box's reign over the Need for Speed series, until they moved onto Frostbite 2 for their final title. Games using Speed Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 introduced some technical Innovations"NFS Hot Pursuit 2" A big batch of new screens complements a list of new details about the game. , which included - but isn’t limited to: * Multi pass specular highlighting on the cars to allow for metallic paint and hot sun reflections. * Damage modeling with trunks and hoods that spring open and realistically hinge on joints. * Vertical or horizontal split screen for two player, head to head action. This allows the user to choose which view suits them better. * Mirrored version of all tracks, which allows for even more variation. * Fog is variable in different section of the track to provide dramatic looks throughout an environment. For example, there is deep fog in the darker forest, but then you come out to a bright, clear area. * 66 events in the 2 career event trees. * Reward system that lets the player choose what to unlock, for both cars and tracks. * Police Chase meter that counts down as you outrun the cops. When it's empty, the cops will call off the chase. This allows for more chases, but also a way for the player to "win" against the cops and get a small reprieve. Reportedly, the two development teams have come up with a widely different graphic engine for the Xbox/Cube versions that almost looks like an entirely different game from the PS2 version."Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2" NFS is hot to trot, but multi-console race fans will have a hard choice ahead of them... Direct-feed videos included! Black Box's busy scenery is still in full effect on the Xbox and Cube, with beautiful glades of trees that you rush by at high speeds, but EA Seattle's graphic engine tilts towards quite a bit more color in the visuals. This gave the game more of a Ridge Racer cartoonish look -- the PS2 title has a realistic grit to it. Nowhere else was the difference between the two projects more apparent than in the car models -- although unfinished, the Xbox and Cube versions went for more broad, complex effects on the cars than the PS2's dark shading. Six passes are made on the Xbox/Cube cars, with real reflection mapping clearly viewable on the car bodies. Impressive, but the PS2's simpler approach created a clear sheen on the cars that played perfectly with the lighting for a tight look fitting right in with the chiseled environments. On Xbox and GameCube, in the current state, the cars looked brighter and more busy with gloss -- again looking more colorful and animated than hard and rendered. NFSHP2_PC.jpg|Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (PC) SpeedInfoBox1.jpg|Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (PS2) Need for Speed: Underground "If you decide to set an entire game at night, there are a whole host of conscious decisions that need to be made to really create a convincing look and environment. For us, it was first and foremost the lighting. Not just how the light appears in the world, but also how it affects the cars, the other objects, and the world in general." — Chuck OsiejaNeed for Speed Underground Q&A GameSpot: Once you'd settled on the look of the game, how did you approach creating game graphics that were appropriate? Does the game use an all-new engine? Chuck Osieja: Underground is actually built on the PS2 Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 engine. Using core technology from a product rated at 90-plus allowed us to start from a solid base and add to the existing game engine, as opposed to spending half the development cycle rewriting rendering code. It's certainly allowed us to get to a lot more game features than we would have if we had started from scratch. A key part of the engine this time around with Underground is its flexibility. The team has done a great job of creating common code that works with little or no augmentation on all the platforms. They've been very successful at having everything work on every platform. Although all the platforms have their strengths and weaknesses, the team wanted to make sure that no platform was shortchanged because they couldn't create a specific technique on a console due to hardware limitations. The most striking aspect of Need for Speed Underground is its graphics, which seem to feature an impressive combination of style and substance. In terms of style, Need for Speed Underground is likely to be the toast of the racing scene. While the game's graphics engine certainly pulls its fair share of performance out of the PlayStation 2, the visuals have been given an extra layer of polish courtesy of Hollywood. Two-time Academy Award nominee for visual effects Habib Zargarpour worked closely with the development team, sharing various techniques he'd learned in the film industry. The resulting lighting effects complement the graphics engine and achieve a stunning sense of photo-realism that might just set the next big trend in video game special effects. However, the most commendable aspect of the game's graphics is the fact that they don't negatively impact the gameplay. For all of Need for Speed Underground's panache, the team's focus has remained on ensuring that the game plays well. In many cases, the impressive visuals even offer you some useful information, whether to show you the damage on your car or to indicate a shortcut just off to one side.Need For Speed Underground Preview Need for Speed: Underground 2 The game's new neighborhood structure offers several distinctly different environments that are enhanced by a robust new lighting system and weather effects.Need for Speed Underground 2 Updated Hands-On The lighting is excellent. NFSU had many dark patches, and this one makes up for that with cats eyes and better sign placement. The cars all show realtime reflections off windows and exteriors, and EA has made sure there is some kind of Chinatown section filled with bright flickering lights."Need for Speed Underground 2" You want 40 hours of racing? EA delivers the most ambitious game in the series. In a demo, the team's developers went straight to the point. Using streaming technology to create a massive living, breathing city (like Rockstar's Midnight Club series), NFSU2 is a massive, five-neighborhood metropolis, offering a huge amount of exploration to the tune of 200 km of cityscape to drive through (as opposed to the 40 km for NFSU).Need For Speed Underground 2: First Look Osieja also showed how you can drive into any area of the game, starting from the southern-most tip of the city and flooring your ride across the environment in realtime to the distant mountain on the far end, without load times or cutscenes. Another big, big difference is that the car physics have been tweaked to be more realistic and less arcade-y. The cars feel heavier and the controls are a little looser than before. Instead of being able to needle into turns at the last second, drivers will need to anticipate turns. If the turn is still too tight, then there's always the good old emergency brake to swing out the back end more for the turns.Need for Speed Underground 2 Hands-On Just as the Customization functions are impressive and seem never-ending, all of the functions Under the Hood are equally staggering. Players can find that they'll be able to save out several versions of their car for special races, tune their cars on the fly in the Test Track, and really get into the mechanics of their ride if they should choose to. Just to give you an idea, the parts you can adjust include the brakes, the ECU (fuel regulator), nitrous, suspension, tires, transmission, turbo, weight reduction, and more. Each one of these aspects can be tweaked in the minutest possible ways.NFSU 2: Total Customization, Pt. 2 Need for Speed: Most Wanted "Though content and control may seem familiar, the big enhancement to the game comes in the form of high-definition visuals that the development team has been working to ensure will serve as a flashy showcase for the Xbox 360." — GameSpotNeed for Speed Most Wanted - Updated Xbox 360 Impressions Most Wanted has been a lengthy work in progress. From inception, the team has taken well over a year to build the environments and geography for gameplay. The polygon count is, according to the developers, "through the roof," and it shows. Most Wanted manages to capture the gritty terrain of urban racing down to the cracks in the pavement. More memory on the Xbox 360 means more ability to display cop cars and improve the A.I. Make no mistake about it; EA has already proclaimed that the 360 version will boast richer A.I. than its current-gen counterparts.[http://xbox360.gamespy.com/xbox-360/need-for-speed-most-wanted/656165p1.html "Need for Speed Most Wanted" via GameSpy] As glossy as the game looks on current-generation platforms, the Xbox 360 version brings a laundry list of effects to the Most Wanted party. The environments feature a much higher level of detail and crisp textures. The cars, the undisputed stars of the game, are modeled with a generous amount of polygons, resulting in an impressive look. The 360's added horsepower also allows for even more cars to be rendered at once, which is impressive because they add to the game's challenge (especially if those vehicles are police cars that are intent on stopping you). The environment and vehicles are complemented by a robust array of effects that showcase their detail. You'll find all manner of dynamic lighting, which runs the gamut from the broad strokes of lens flare that nearly obscures your vision, to the finer touches, such as reflections that glint off your car's highlights. The models in the game feature real bump mapping and use real-time reflections too, and unlike some other games that were on the show floor, there's no significant draw-in at all. In fact, the draw distance is so long that no one was able to notice anything, even if you wanted to search for it.TGS 2005: Need for Speed: Most Wanted Hands-On The environments are also impressive. The giant fictional city is awash in realtime dynamic light that does what the early Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec did back in the summer of 2001. But way higher. It provides an impressive sense of light and shadow generated in realtime, and you'll see and feel it when you first see and play it.[https://www.ign.com/articles/2005/09/21/need-for-speed-most-wanted-8 "Need For Speed Most Wanted" Very, very pretty indeed. We see a full playable, nearly finished version of the Xbox 360 version.] Instead of using HDR, EA chose to implement "overbright," which simulates some of the light bloom effects without being too overpowered.Need for Speed: Most Wanted Hands-On Need for Speed: Carbon "The Need for Speed franchise prides itself on innovation and this year is no different," said Executive Producer Larry LaPierre.Feel the Need, the Need for Speed Just as Need for Speed: Underground used Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 Ps2's core tech to move on, Carbon was developed upon the Xbox 360 code base from Need for Speed: Most Wanted.Need for Speed Carbon - 1UP's Interview with Steve Anthony The team this time around has introduced a new physics system that's specific to each type of car, so a modded Mustang will handle very differently from a custom Golf.GC 2006: Need for Speed Carbon Chat Not only that, but the physics system for the drift mode was rebuilt with a whole new scoring mechanic to go along with it.Need for Speed Carbon - IGN's Interview with Steve Anthony They've also introduced vector-scoping for Carbon, which allows the player to put decals on any part of the car, not just certain sections. They can be scaled, rotated and merged together, plus there are over 900 to choose from, as well as 90,000 paint combinations, so a player really can create any look they want. Need for Speed: ProStreet "The most requested feature from fans has been realistic damage, so that was something we definitely wanted to include in this new game," explained Doyle.Need for Speed ProStreet Hands-on Damage System Black Box devoted a significant amount of time to a persistent damage system that emulates real-life collision in hope of showing the raw, violent power of these cars.Need for Speed Turns a Corner ProStreet's damage engine is undoubtedly rather impressive, having been totally overhauled for this new Need for Speed entry. "Damage was a real challenge for us because there's an easy way and a hard way - and we chose the hard way. The easy way is when you just replace sections of the car with damaged sections, to mimic the effects of crashes. However, we couldn't do that because users can customise their cars a lot and we would have had to create thousands of damaged parts. So, instead we needed to create a real-time damage engine that is affected by the speed you hit an object, where you hit and how you hit it. It was a super expensive task because we had to remodel all our cars from scratch." Physics "One of the biggest new features that we have this year, is we've rebuilt our physics engine from the ground up. We were able to go out to the Porsche test track in Leipzig. All of our physics guys went out there and collected real data from them. Got all their test cars to go out there and do some crazy stuff out on the track. And we were able to build a physics engine that's very believable, yet accessible. So if you're a really big race enthusiast, and you know all about racing, you're able to take that raw physics engine, with nothing else and the car will behave as it would in real life. But if you're not a big race enthusiast and you just want to play and have some fun, we've got driver aids which come in in layers. Systems such as anti-lock braking, stability management and control, traction control, as well as a lot of visual aids, like braking markers, best line on the track, so these are systems that the player can customise, turn on and off as they need it. It really caters the experience towards how they want to play and still be very competitive at the same time." — Andrew HahnNeed for Speed ProStreet AU Interview Black Box looked back on drifting back and reinvented the mode. They spent a lot of time researching and seeing how these cars perform, which is another reason they've put in their brand new, next-generation particle system for the smoke, because these cars, they're built to drift, and they blow off a lot of smoke. AI Lastly, an improved artificial intelligence system that reacts to your actions and gives each racer its own personality. Racers will make mistakes and display different levels of aggression.E3 '07: Need for Speed ProStreet Hands-On Need for Speed: Undercover "We went basically from 40 attributes - say 6, 7 years ago - to up to 400; everything's based on curves, speed, we can tune essentially every parameter of the car." — Mark D.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6lPlhKzNh4Behind the Scenes Heroic Driving Engine be added. Trivia * A common misconception is that these games use the EAGL "engine", while they do, EAGL is merely a graphics library shared across multiple EA titles, not Black Box's core game engine. * Modders have noticed source folders named Speed, and even multiple PC entries sharing a Speed.exe file. Sources Category:Engines Category:Need for Speed Category:Original Research